Hermann Rauschning

Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning (7 August 1887 – 8 February 1982) was a German politician and author, adherent of the Conservative Revolution movement who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it. He was the President of the Senate (head of government and chief of state) of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934. In 1934, he renounced Nazi Party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany. He eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism. Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Gespräche mit Hitler ("Conversations with Hitler", American title: Voice of Destruction, British title: Hitler Speaks) in which he claimed to have had many meetings and conversations with Adolf Hitler.

Rauschning was born in Thorn in the province of West Prussia (then part of the German Empire; now Toruń, Poland) to a Prussian Army officer. He attended the Prussian Cadet Corps institute at Potsdam and studied history, German philology and musicology at the Berlin University, where he obtained a Dr. phil. doctorate in 1911. He fought in World War I as a lieutenant and was wounded in action.

After the war, he stayed in Poznań, which (like Rauschning's home region of West Prussia) was ceded by Germany to Poland after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. He was active in several organisations of the German minority and prominent in the Poznań historical society. Disagreeing with the leaders of the German minority in the Poznań Voivodeship, he moved to the Free City of Gdansk (which was under League of Nations mandate) in 1926, where he bought an estate in the village of Warnau (Warnowo) in the Vistula Fens and became a farmer.

During the 1920s, Rauschning was close to the "Young Conservative" movement of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and affiliated with the German National People's Party (DNVP) of Danzig. In 1932, he joined the Nazi Party as he believed it to offer the only way out of Germany's troubles, including the return of Danzig to Germany. In the 1930 Danzig parliamentary election, the Nazis had become the second-strongest force, replacing the DNVP, as they had discovered the electoral potential of the rural population in Danzig. Rauschning saw this as a powerful tool to reorganize the Danzig NSDAP. Rauschning became the agricultural advisor to the local Gau in January 1932 and in February of the same year, leader of the Danzig Agricultural League (Danziger Landbund), a movement that supported the taking over of the Senate by the Nazis. He became also became chairman of the Danzig Teachers' Association in 1932.

The President of the Senate, Ernst Ziehm (DNVP) who ruled from 1931 to 1933, strongly disliked Rauschning. In Summer 1932, Rauschning and the local Gauleiter Albert Forster met with Adolf Hitler in Obersalzberg to discuss happenings in Danzig. After Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, the Nazis in Danzig withdrew their support for the Ziehm Senate and demanded the formation of a new government under the leadership of Hermann Rauschning. Ziehm refused to form a joint government with the Nazis, but he and his Senate resigned en bloc, triggering an early parliamentary election in May 1933. The NSDAP won this election with an absolute majority and Rauschning became the President of the Senate of Danzig on 20 June 1933, starting the Rauschning Senate which—except for the Senator of Justice—consisted exclusively of NSDAP members.

In foreign affairs, Rauschning did not conceal his personal desire to turn neighbouring Poland into a vassal state of Germany. As a conservative nationalist, Rauschning was not typical of Nazi members and the Nazis' violent antisemitism was alien to him. He was a bitter rival of Albert Forster, the future Gauleiter of Danzig.

There has been some debate over the importance of Rauschning to Hitler and the party. One of the reasons cited for Hitler's interest in Rauschning was his citizenship and political leadership in the Free City of Danzig. One of the first questions that Hitler asked Rauschning was "whether Danzig had an extradition agreement with Germany," which drew Hitler’s attention due to the possibility of him being forced to go underground. Hitler feared that the Weimar Republic might move against the party and ban it. Since Danzig retained an independent status under the League of Nations, Hitler apparently felt that the free port "might well offer a useful asylum."

On 23 November 1934, he resigned from the Senate and the party. In the April 1935 Danzig elections, he supported "constitutionalist" candidates against the Nazis and wrote articles supporting co-operation with the Poles, which angered the Nazis. Rauschning found himself in personal danger.